


The Twenty-First Century

by nyanja14



Category: Nabari no Ou
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3261098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyanja14/pseuds/nyanja14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gau’s plan to drag Raikou-san into the twenty-first century does not go as expected. Whether or not Raikou is trolling Gau is up to you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Twenty-First Century

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hassohappa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hassohappa/gifts).



> This was a Christmas gift fic for Brianna, but then I was way late because I am terrible. I am super rusty at writing naberries, so y'all have my apologies for the shoddy characterization. 
> 
> THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE A CRACK FIC. You decide. Enjoy.

For nearly as long as he’d known him, Gau had been trying to wheedle Raikou-san into getting a cell phone. It was the 21st century. People sped along at hundreds of kilometers per hour on the _shinkansen_ every day, elderly men and women worked out with tai chi videos on their iPads, and centuries-old ninja villages hid online. Meanwhile, Shimizu Raikou, twenty-one years old, had a corded landline and an answering machine that still used tape. Tape! Outrageous. Gau knew that Raikou-san had his own sense of… style, but carrying a cell phone was practically a necessity nowadays. And it wasn’t like Gau minded taking Raikou-san’s calls for him—he always wanted to be helpful—but it got to be pretty frustrating when _he_ needed to get a hold of Raikou-san.

So the day he managed to drag Raikou-san into a store and they left with a contract and a new phone was a day of celebration for Gau. At least, it was until Gau realized he’d perhaps made a grave mistake.

* * *

 

It was a basic flip phone, nothing noteworthy except perhaps its lime green color. Gau activated the phone for Raikou-san and demonstrated how to add contacts. “I don’t have to show you how to call someone, do I?”

“No,” Raikou-san said. “I have used cell phones before, you know.” He took the phone, holding it delicately like it was a flower or an especially fragile egg and squinted at the screen. “I can send mail, right?”

“Yes. Here…” Gau leaned over and pointed and Raikou-san selected the correct icon. “Go to my name… yeah, there. And now you can write me something.”

He sat back in his chair as Raikou-san began the tedious process of typing. Raikou-san held the phone with one hand and pressed the keys with the index finger of his other hand. Gau waited… and waited… and finally Raikou-san set his blindingly green phone down and Gau’s chirped. “See? It’s easy,” he said as he flipped his own phone open to give the message a cursory glance.

A cursory glance, however, turned out to be insufficient.

_Gau,_

_Have you been doing well? Fortunately, I am well. Cold days are beginning and the rainy season is finally over. Of course, the rain has its own beauty and charm as well. Thank you for setting up the cell phone for me. In return, could I treat you to_ odon _this weekend? I saw a new stand near the train station. I’ll wait for your reply. Please take care of yourself._

_Sincerely,_

_Raikou_

“Raikou-san…” Gau said, slowly lowering his phone. You don’t have to write an entire letter.”

“That wasn’t a letter,” Raikou-san declared, looking affronted. “It was barely a note. And besides, it’s mail, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not _mail_.”

Raikou-san wasn’t paying attention though, instead carefully drafting a message for Yukimi-san. Gau sighed and quickly tapped out his reply.

_Odon sounds good._

* * *

 

“Raimei-san. Is your brother actually seventy years old?”

Raimei-san laughed. “I doubt it. The way he dresses? No way.”

“The way he writes though,” Gau groaned. He’d always gotten pretty good grades in Japanese, but Raikou-san’s penchant for somewhat antiquated _kanji_ had him consulting a dictionary more often than he cared to admit.

“Well, when he was younger he loved to read old novels,” Raimei-san mused. “Maybe he picked it up from them? Anyway!” She thrust a small gift bag at him. “Make sure he gets this, okay?”

* * *

 

“What is it?” Raikou-san asked when he opened the package from the gift bag.

“Ah. It’s a phone charm. See, you attach it here, like this,” Gau explained as he stuck the neon pink rubber lizard charm to the phone. It clashed badly with the phone’s color, but Raikou-san seemed pleased with it. He had to admit that Raimei-san had a better grasp of her brother’s style than he did.

“That reminds me.” Raikou-san took his phone back from Gau, pecked at it with his index finger for a moment, and then showed the screen to Gau. “Raimei sent me mail and it had this strange thing in it. Is it a virus or something?”

_I can’t believe you finally got a phone! (^o^)_

“What? No. That’s an emoticon. Look, it’s a little face.”

Raikou-san frowned at the tiny, elated digital expression on his screen. “But what is an ‘emoticon’ supposed to mean?”

“It…” To be honest, Gau didn’t really _get_ emoticons either. He could recognize the popular ones, but he never used them himself and the more complicated ones baffled him. “It just expresses an emotion. There’s a whole bunch of them. Raimei sent you a happy one.”

Raikou-san examined the screen again. “It does look happy,” he decided. “Hmm.”

* * *

 

Raikou-san fell in love with the emoticons. For days, Gau’s phone would chirp at random times with a mail from Raikou-san containing only some new emoticon he’d discovered. Some of them were neat and Gau had been rather impressed by the octopus one, but receiving three dozen emails a day of nothing but emoticons got old quick.

Gau still diligently checked his phone each time.

Eventually, the emoticon spam ended. However the emoticons themselves were there to stay, embedded for eternity in each and every of Raikou-san’s messages. For a brief moment, Gau breathed a sigh of relief, not realizing that Raikou-san had moved on to bigger and better things.

* * *

 

“Did you know Raikou is writing a cell phone novel?” Raimei-san asked the next time they met up.

Gau blinked. “A… a what?”

“A cell phone novel,” she repeated, as though that would somehow explain everything. “His is about half-done and it’s actually getting pretty popular.”

She gave him the link (as well another phone charm for Raikou-san) and Gau looked it up when he got home, spending a few hours reading the whole thing from start to end. It was tragic romance about alien royalty and it was completely silly and yet Gau _needed to know_ how it was going to end. During dinner, Gau demanded that Raikou-san reveal the ending, but he shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’ve just been writing it during my lunch break to pass the time.”

Gau stared at him. He already knew that Raikou-san was amazing, but that was just too much. “Raikou-san, you should think about it a little more,” he suggested carefully. “Thousands of people are reading it.”

“Really?”

* * *

 

_why the hell did Raikou send me a link to a gay cellphone novel_

Gau blinked at the email and sighed. This wasn’t what he’d meant when he’d told Raikou-san to put a little more effort into his novel. _It’s his. He probably wants your thoughts on it since you’re a writer._

The next two messages arrived in quick succession. _i’m a journalist, i don’t do this sci-fi harlequin bullshit. you help him with it._ And then: _why is he writing this in the first place?_

_I wish I knew, Yukimi-san._

That was it for a while, but in the middle of the night, Gau woke to his phone’s chirping. He reached for the phone groggily, squinting at the bright light it emitted when he flipped the phone open. Through his narrowed eyes, he managed to focus on the blurry characters of the message.

_everyone is going to be expecting xandu to be pissed about iirily’s plans and fall into her trap, so raikou should be sure to have him react differently. it’d be interesting if xandu somehow already knew about what prince kreanax had done. also tell raikou his pacing is shit, he needs to slow things down_

* * *

 

Three months passed. Raikou-san phone had five charms dangling from it, there were at least seven thousand people following his space opera, and the landline and answering machine were disconnected. Raikou-san had taken to the cell phone like a duck to water. Gau was rather proud, but also he feared he may have created a monster.

Raikou-san was curled up in his preferred arm chair, tapping away on his phone while Gau finished his homework at the old desktop computer they had (or rather, Gau had) inherited from Yukimi-san years ago when he’d upgraded. After some moments passed, Gau realized that he hadn’t heard Raikou-san’s cell phone keys clicking for some time and looked up to find Raikou-san watching him intently.  

“What is it?”

“I should get my own computer,” Raikou-san mused. “I could do a lot more stuff online with a laptop than I can do on my phone.”

Stuff online? “…Like what?” Gau asked somewhat nervously.

Raikou-san shrugged one shoulder up and down, returning to his phone typing. “All sorts of things, I suppose. You’ll help me pick a good laptop out, won’t you, Gau?”

Gau sighed and made a solemn vow to himself to do his upmost best to keep Raikou-san from coming across MMORPGs. “Of course, Raikou-san.”


End file.
